Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib?
During the past eight months there have been many news cycles, many front-page stories, many events. There have been elections. There have been hurricanes and tidal waves. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, eight months is not a very long time. In most of the world, something that happened eight months ago is considered "recent." In Washington, however, it seems that eight months ago is considered "ancient." How else to explain the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of attorney general of the United States? Or, more to the point: How else to explain the widespread assumption that Gonzales -- who commissioned the "torture memo" of August 2002, following a meeting in his office -- will be decisively confirmed? After all, eight months ago, much of the country -- and much of the Republican Party -- was gripped by horror and embarrassment after the publication of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those photographs haven't gone away: As I write this, I need only click on my computer's Internet Explorer icon and there is Lynndie England, grinning and giving a thumbs-up behind a pile of naked men. If the pictures haven't gone away, the value system that led to Abu Ghraib hasn't gone away either. Last month -- really recently -- lawsuits filed by American human rights groups forced the government to release thousands of pages of documents showing that the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base long preceded the Abu Ghraib photographs, and that abuse has continued since then too. U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have, according to the administration's own records and my colleagues' reporting, used beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and dogs during interrogations. They probably still do. [more]